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The paper seeks to analyze empirically the consequences of family responsibilities for career success and the influence of career context variables and gender on this relationship.

The sample consists of 305 business school graduates (52 percent male) from a major Central European university who finished their studies around 2000 and who were in their early career stages (i.e. third and fourth career years).

The paper reports a negative relationship between family responsibilities and objective and subjective career success via work centrality. There is also substantive support for the effect of contextual factors on the relationship between family situations and career success, emphasizing the importance of a multi‐level perspective. Finally, evidence of gender effects exists.

The empirical generalizability of the results is limited by the structure of the sample. Qualitative in‐depth studies are needed to further understand the relationships found.

The results underscore the importance of the work‐family‐interface for employee retention measures. Tailored HR policies are crucial.

Theoretically, the paper develops a multi‐level causal model of specific aspects of work‐family relations including variables ranging from meso (career context) to more micro (family, individual). Empirically, the study focuses on young business professionals prior to having a family or in the early stages of their family life.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the effects of gender and gender role type on objective career success over time from a career practices perspective.

Based on a relational perspective on gender shifting attention to a field, habitus, and capital-based view on careers, the paper analyses the interrelation of gender, gender role type (GRT) and income with a longitudinal two-cohort design of business school graduates (1990, 2000), using mixed linear models.

In line with the authors ' argumentation, female or undifferentiated GRT earn less than masculine or androgynous GRT in both cohorts over time, and relative income of androgynous compared to masculine men is higher in the 2000 cohort than in the 1990 cohort. Contrary to the authors ' hypotheses, the income gap between women and men has widened rather than narrowed, and masculine women of the 2000 cohort do not attain a higher proportion of the androgynous women ' s mean income compared to the 1990 cohort.

Career success is based on self-report data (income) and partially based on retrospective evaluations thereof. As the idea of connecting masculinity and femininity to gender and career outcomes arose after data collection, the authors had to rely on the psychometric items and scales already contained in the questionnaire.

Instead of (re- or de-)constructing gender as bipolar object, but as realisation of historical acting including the context within which practical actions take place, the concept of GRT is applied to objective career success from a longitudinal perspective, owing to the relational nature of gender and the temporal nature of careers, as well as its embeddedness in the context within which trajectories unfold. In doing so, it shifts attention to career practices, emerging from the interplay of career field, career habitus, and career capital.

New forms of organising and new forms of individuals private and professional life concepts have affected organisations as well as careers. The resulting new forms of careers are characterised by two major elements: organisations are no longer the primary arena for professional careers and the diversity of careers and career paths is sharply increasing. At the level of global careers similar developments can be observed. In addition, two specifics can be mentioned: a number of additional forms of working internationally supplement expatriation in its classic sense and there seems to be an increasing pressure on the speed and diversity of international assignments. There is comparatively little theoretical insight into these developments. Departing from a sociological perspective and using the theoretical framework of late French Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, this paper takes a career field and habitus perspective of careers. Based on that, it tries to identify areas of contribution for the global career discussion that can emerge from such an approach.

The purpose of this brief paper is to introduce the papers in this special issue of Journal of Managerial Psychology, focused on “Complexities and challenges in the work‐family interface”.

The paper first introduces the theme of the special issue, and a brief outline of each paper contained in it is given.

There is concern that progress in the work‐family research area has been somewhat restricted and may have failed to take sufficient account of the complexity of work‐family issues.

The literature on the work‐family interface is complex, and theory in the field is uncertain and under‐developed. The papers in this special issue should further understanding of the challenges and complexities underscoring the work‐family interface.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the special issue which presents cutting-edge research in the field of gender, management, and leadership.

The special issue arose following the success of a stream on gender, management and leadership held at the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Conference, and generated 22 full-paper submissions for consideration from conference participants and from responses to the call. The papers covered many themes and incorporated a range of different methodologies. Ultimately, six were selected to be included in this special issue.

All studies of this special isue reveal gender performativity, as the “taken for granted” practice of gender. They show, exactly as suggested by Butler, that gender categories are brought into being performatively, so that “naming” of a subject creates the preconditions for certain categories which then become invested with meaning.

All of the studies included in this special issue show that studying gender, management and leadership in organisations is significant: we do not really leave gender at the door when entering our organisational work lives; rather, we “do” gender in specific ways, some reflexive but most perhaps not.

The paper shows that the special issue highlights the fact that management jobs have traditionally been understood as being constructed according to male norms and thus creating difficulties for women. These include the material part of their work as well as the stereotypical expectations and perceptions and reactions from others. The taken-for-granted point of departure is that women and men are essentially different, as shown by the ascribed congruency between men and management jobs. The studies reported in this special issue, however, try to challenge such conceptions and call for more sophisticated ways to interpret women ' s and men ' s experiences in management positions to enhance the understanding of the complexity of everyday organisational processes.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the influence demographic factors have on the way lesbians and gay men manage their sexual orientation at work.

Based on data taken from a cross-sectional survey of 1,308 gay and lesbian employees working in Germany, four regression models are proposed. The means of handling one’s homosexuality at work was measured by the 31 items containing Workplace Sexual Identity Management Measure from Anderson et al. (2001).

Results indicate that being in a relationship is related to increased openness about one’s homosexuality at work. Furthermore, it appears that the older and the more religious lesbian and gay employees are, the more open (and therefore less hidden) about their sexuality they are. Having a migratory background is related to being more guarded about one’s sexual orientation, whereas personal mobility within the country is not related to the way one manages one’s sexual orientation at work. Lesbians tend to be a little more open and less guarded about their homosexuality compared to gay men.

The focus of this research (and the related limitations) offers several starting and connecting points for more intersectional research on workforce diversity and diversity management.

The study’s findings indicate the need for an intersectional approach to organizational diversity management strategies. Exemplified by the dimension “sexual orientation”, it can be shown that the impact each dimension has for an employee’s everyday workplace experiences and behavior in terms of a certain manifestation of one dimension of diversity can only be understood in terms of its interplay with other dimensions of diversity.

It is shown that manifestations of demographic factors that tend to broaden the individual’s coping resources for stigma-relevant stressors lead to more openness about one’s homosexuality in the workplace.

Research neglects the role that specific locations play in the decision process to accept international work. This paper aims to explore the career drivers of individuals working as expatriates in London (UK) and to focus on the relationships with specific location attributes.

A total of 11 qualitative in‐depth interviews and 348 quantitative questionnaire responses are used to explore the importance of intelligent career considerations for working as an expatriate in London.

A range of location‐specific factors and intelligent career considerations is identified and quantitatively assessed. The study depicts the links of perceived career factors and location‐specific drivers.

Applying the intelligent careers framework, the research goes beyond the normally used broad national factors to explore career capital drivers that motivate individuals to go to a specific city location. In exploring the relatively neglected areas of knowing‐whom and knowing‐why it sheds light on international relocation decision making. These insights inform further academic research and help to shape expatriation policies and practices of organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to explore what attracts individuals to live in a South East Asian city. It uses a boundaryless career approach that is interested in how people cross-traditional career boundaries, including those related to country and location barriers. Going beyond an individual and organizational view, a more extensive model of location decisions is developed that incorporates broad macro-factor career drivers.

A large-scale qualitative study explored individual, organizational, political, economic, socio-cultural, technological, ecological, legal, natural and general drivers to live in the city. The authors interviewed 43 individuals who had moved to the city from abroad, were born in the city and still lived there or who were born in the city but had moved to another foreign city.

Many macro-contextual factors – i.e. day-to-day regulatory stability and transparency, economic growth, friendliness and meritocracy, safety and a good, clean environment – were seen as attractive by all three groups. People who had left the city raised some specific criticism regarding the vibrancy, freedom and creativity of thought.

The study focused on highly skilled individuals who most often had experience in living in different cities to get more reflective views. However, this restricted the generalizability. The findings nuance the understanding of boundaryless careers.

The research expands the normally used attraction factors and develops a broader framework of city attractiveness drivers. The emerging picture can be used by the city administration to manage its global attractiveness while increasing non-regulatory “stickiness” to retain talent.

The research has social implications with respect to cross-border boundaryless careers and talent acquisition, management and retention strategies.

The research expands the macro-contextual discussion and goes beyond the dominant focus on individuals and organizations when investigating boundaryless careers. The study uses an innovative method as it does not only interview foreign expatriates but also two further, more neglected groups: local citizens and individuals who had left the city. It develops an extended model of boundaryless location drivers and develops some exemplary propositions.

The purpose of this paper is to examine repatriate career exploration as a continuing growth‐oriented process and introduce repatriate hope as its crucial driver.

Through a review of relevant literature, the framework of hope theory is introduced to argue for a more “agentic” view of the repatriate that can act as an independent career agent in the increasingly boundaryless career environment.

The paper extends current knowledge of the repatriation process by describing ways in which repatriate hope drives career exploration toward valued outcomes of career growth and career success. It is also described how this repatriate career success will depend on the repatriate expectations and the social and organizational support received by the repatriate.

The main contribution of this paper is a new view of the repatriation process through the lens of the hope theory that emphasizes positive psychological perspective indicating career growth/success as a valued outcome of repatriate career exploration process. Thus, repatriate is viewed as a proactive individual managing his or her career success and using exploration as a means of coping with and adjusting to a shifting set of challenges presented by the dramatic role change.